festival legacy: Newport Folk & Jazz

As explained on our “About” page, this blog was born out of the experience that is the Newport Folk Festival. That experience cannot be captured in words, but this outstanding long-form article from consequence.net makes an extremely impressive attempt:

quote from Cormac McCarthy

“Music is made out of nothing but some fairly simple rules . . . The notes themselves amount to almost nothing. But why some particular arrangement of these notes should have such a profound effect on our emotions is a mystery beyond even the hope of comprehension.”

— Cormac McCarthy, Stella Maris

quote from Valerie June

“A whole lot of magic has to happen to make music. A whole lot of minds have to see something invisible. The act of making music — that could be spiritual. You’re taking something that’s not physically seen and you’re bringing it from nowhere, pulling it from thin air, so people can experience it.”–Valerie June, 2021

read the article at nytimes.com

Newport Folk Festival 2020

As described in our “About”page, this blog was born out of the experience that is the Newport Folk Festival. The idea was to spread the festival’s pervasive sense of joy, good will, and community as widely as possible, throughout the year. Of course, this year the “folk family” stayed home. Nevertheless, via social media, the tremendous efforts of the Festival Foundation, Jay Sweet, and numerous other organizers and musicians, we all managed to be together even while apart. Thank you Jay Sweet, Caps, and everyone else for making the weekend happen.